YuseffandRachelleDay: DIY, Details, Concept

10/13/2015 12:28:00 AM

Here goes the post that I still have no idea how to write. I wanted to document everything we did for our big day to help future brides (/groom?), and for memories' sake, but oh my it's a lot. How do I categorise it?? So please bear with me as I fumble through this (I'm sure to be a very long) post. haha

CONCEPT

We knew from the start that we wanted a festive laid-back wedding. We didn't want it to be traditional, extravagant, nor formal. It's not us. So everything we did was based on that. We didn't even have a color motif! bwahaha...

The look of the boys are all vintage inspired, we both love the look. They are in jeans to have that casual vibe. Yuseff loves wearing caps / hats, so they all wore one.

As for the girls, I wanted bohemian. I love the look! I bought the girls skirts in different colors, and my maid of honor wore her own outfit. I just asked her to wear anything floral-ish. Haha.. Also gave them floral crowns to at least unify the look.

We didn't want everyone to wear the exact same outfit, so the boys were provided with bow tie and vest, and they wore their own jeans and shirt. For the girls, we just gave them the skirts and asked them to wear any white top. They were asking what kind of top, and I just told them ANY. Haha.. I don't care. I was actually a bit worried that the boys / girls wouldn't match at all. I mean, very muted vintage versus bright colorful florals?

Thankfully, it all worked out great. :)

And for us, we knew the look we wanted from the start. He didn't like the matching suit look. We bought his entire outfit off the rack at megamall after we met with P/V. We were just looking on what options was out there, but as it turned out, we found the entire outfit the very same day and we both love it! As for my dress, this wasn't the original plan. I'll share more on my next post, but I so love this dress. Bought it from a department store! ;) I fell in love with it the first time I saw it, but I thought that I already have a dress. When the first plan didn't worked out, I immediately went back for this dress, worried because it looked so tight and it might not fit me, but when I tried it on, it fits perfectly. :)

As for the venue styling, we stuck with our laid-back concept. Even though we did everything in the exact same space, we wanted to have a different look for the ceremony and reception. We wanted both "event" to be special in their own way.

For the ceremony, we went with simpler and fresher. Yuseff wanted an arch or something to that effect to "frame" us. This whole look came in organically, it wasn't planned at all. We used items from Yuseff's sister's props stash since she rents out some items for events, and some from our own furniture/decor hoard. I'll explain more later. :)

Since we wanted to have an actual aisle set-up instead of guests seating on their table for the ceremony, we had all tables set-up except for the two long tables in the middle to make way for rows of chairs to create the aisle.

Now for the reception look, we knew what we wanted early on. Yuseff suggested the cafe facade look and I fell in love with the idea. Instead of having the typical sofa seats for the couple, we wanted to feel like we're on a date alfresco on some cafe, so this counts as our first date as a married couple. :)

Once the ceremony was over, and guests went out for the cocktail hour, they set-up the middle tables, and removed the ceremony backdrop to reveal this. For the general feel, I just wanted it to be very bohemian and eclectic.

So that was the overall concept, but there's a lot of details and DIYs that came with it. Haha.. Here goes..

Originally, I'm planning to tackle the ceiling decor as well, but I came to my senses and realized that it would be so much easier to leave it to the pros since 1) The venue has high ceilings and we do not have scaffolding and 2) The allotted set-up time for everything was only 3 hours. So we got my friend's services to decorate our ceiling. She really does event styling so I left it up to her.

I'm not big on doing drapes since it doesn't suit our concept and I already love the venue's ceiling, so they concentrated the effort in the center. Love the hanging vines look! Very bohemian indeed.

They also did the trellis outside the venue, and they did a very lovely job. This trellis welcomed the guests and it sets the mood as soon as you step in.

At night!!

DIYs

So here goes the longest part of this post. Yep, the ones above are just introduction. Now you know what I meant when I said this is going to be a very long one. Haha..

1. Boutonnieres
At first, I thought we don't need / want one. It's just one of the pretty things that you can do without. But then, with all our non-traditional elements, and laid-back non-matching attires, we decided it would be nice to have one to tie all the boy's look and at least have them look "weddingy." Hehe...

We bought the faux rose for P10 each at Dapitan Arcade. They only have 2 colors available, hot pink and orange, so obviously, with the boys' vintage look, we went with orange.

(Please excuse the flaring candle, we misplaced our glue gun so I had to use those instead! Haha)

The burlap we already have since that's what I used for our flag table numbers, the lace that I laid over the burlap is an old skirt, and the fillers is a dried out babys breath that has been in the house for a month. Haha.. It's not planned, I just find that it's missing something and Yuseff suggested the babys breath and I love the look.

2. Headpiece / Veil

Now this one is a little more challenging, not with the amount of work, but rather with my thought process. I do not know what I wanted! Haha... Originally, I wanted to wear a floral crown for the ceremony. But I was quite swayed by friends to have a veil since it's the only time you can actually wear a wedding veil right? But I was firm on not having the normal kind since I'm not really comfortable having a fabric over my face, but that's just me hehe.. So I searched and searched for inspiration and found one I love. I wanted a veil at the back and some sort of headband look where the veil is attached.

This one's what I came up with. Originally this was lace, but upon insistent of many trusted friends, I change it into this soft tulle. The lace is just too busy. Haha.. The flower at the back is originally the floral crown that I'll use, but I gave the wrong measurements so I doesn't fit me. Ordered that and all our other floral crowns from Moonbeam by Polina. :). So i retrofitted the crown and used it as accent for the veil.

The brass chain is from a vintage necklace and I used it as the headband. Love the overall look. The dress is really simple and the veil makes it a little more bridal. :)

3. Bouquets

I knew from the start that I'll be doing the flowers. ALL OF THEM. Haha.. Okay, you might think I'm crazy but I figured, I only have a few entourage, and our centrepieces are just amber bottles with random flowers, so I thought, how hard could it be??

Well, it's not that difficult, but really time-consuming, and the fact that we need to do this the day before the wedding adds to the challenge. We wanted it to be fresh so the day before is the only option. We went to dangwa and bought randrom flowers, a big box of it. Went there without really knowing what I want. Haha.. For the bouquets, I just wanted the very wild flower look. Then I saw orange roses, the same look as the boutonnieres so I bought a few dozens for all the bouquets and they all matched. It seemed that we planned this all along but no, just a nice coincidence. I have no idea what flowers I wanted until we went to dangwa the day before. Hehe

The eucalyptus I bought just for my bouquet for it to stand out a little bit more. I was done by around 5:30 pm and my nails looked awful. Haha.. I was planning to go to a nail salon after doing the flowers but its raining really hard, and my brother borrowed our car. So I ended up doing my own nails at 1 am the day of the wedding. Haha...

4. Invitation

Again, we're not going for the traditional invitation, since well.. we're not going for a traditional wedding hehe... I knew that all I wanted was 2 pages, one main invite, and the other for all additional details.

One very important detail is the design itself. You see, while planning for our venue styling, I designed some mood boards of the cafe backdrop we talked about for the reception. Then when the time came to design the invitation, I thought it would be cute to use our backdrop as its graphic so the invitation and the wedding itself would match. When the invitation was printed, we had no choice but to replicate and push through with our backdrop idea or else the invitation wouldn't make any sense hahaha!

We had this printed by a very good friend who does invites, and she gave us a huge discount (thank you!), and I just bought the envelopes from National bookstore. I then risked it by doing the addressing of envelopes using marker pen! Haha.. That's one great thing about a laid-back wedding, everything doesn't have to be prim and proper. My hand-writing was far from calligraphy invites, but it will do. hehe.. I added a shadow lining using brass pen to make it a little more festive.

5. Photobooth Backdrop

As I mentioned earlier, Yuseff's sister do provide backdrops/props/foodcarts for events, so we've got some options that we can use. We just bought a handful of vine garland to be used here and the ceremony, and used our old frames as props. Here is it set up on our garage for the trial.

Here it is being set-up on the venue.

Now, here it is all done. We wanted to do the backdrop ourselves so we just hired out the cam/printer set-up for the photobooth. We also got my friend for that.

We added some wooden animal head that we have lying around the house. It just adds a little more playfulness to the set-up.

6. Lamp Posts

Yuseff had been wanting to make a lamp post ever since we got hold of this wrought iron globe-ish cage light. Now that he found an excuse to make them, he actually made two. Haha

One was placed beside the photobooth, near the entrance, so we used that to put in directional signs as well. The other one, which was painted black, was used for the ceremony and reception backdrop which you'll see later.

7. Signages

I sometimes enjoy doing chalk art, I did one for my dad's restaurant. So obviously, I'll do some for the wedding.. Hehe.. One is for the photobooth backdrop as you've seen on the photos above.

Then there's the welcome signage. Set this up on the entrance, and since we already got the owl ceramic stool, we used them to decorate and act as bride and groom. Haha..

I also did the signage for the reception backdrop and this is my fave out of all I did. Aside from the fact that our name is plastered here, it really completed the backdrop. Plus, it's in a lot of the photos! Haha

The food carts are from Yuseff's sister that she rents our for kiddie parties. I also designed these carts some time ago, and I do the signs for them even before. But since ours is a wedding, I wanted it to be a little more elegant so instead of using my usual colorful and playful fonts, I made it somewhat a little more vintagey and subdued.

8. Prizes

We have a few games so of course it means we need to provide prizes. We wanted it to be home decor related because that's what we do, so Yuseff designed the lamps and had our workers do them, and I had the throw pillows made.

9. Chairs

Of course, this isn't a DIY, but I'm sure only a few people can say that they used their own chairs for their wedding. :) I'm not really into tiffany chairs, and other options are soo expensive. So we just rented two trucks to haul these chairs and some props to the venue. It worked out great since we love the industrial vintage look! Can't imagine using any other chair. Now why and how we got to own 200 vintage industrial chairs is another story.

10. Table Styling

Since I'm going for a bohemian eclectic look, I wanted to use patterned table linen. I think it's cute, plus I get to shop for fabrics! And, I'm sure you're sensing a pattern here, we don't want everything to match. So we chose three different but complimentary pattern, and I just laid it out in the floor plan so the set-up crew would know which pattern to use for which table. Also bought a lace curtain and cut it up to be a runner.

Here is the floor plan/ guide I provided for the set-up crew. The colors represents the table linen, so everything is balanced out. :)

Trial set-up at home.

As for the centerpieces, we just bought a lot of amber bottles to be lined up in the center and ask the caterer to provide tealight candles. Plus the flag table numbers I made were put up in the center bottle.

Here we are arranging all the flowers we bought from dangwa the day before. I made a few arrangement but since I'll be doing the bouquets, I left it up to these boys. :) Yes the same workers who constructed our house were our florist for the day haha.. They did a great job by the way.

Here they are looking all so pretty. :)

And with all the candles lit-up. I was actually a little worried on how all these different patterns would look together, but when we did our entrance and I was up at front, I saw everything and I was sooo happy. It's just how we wanted it to be, simple, intimate and cozy. :)

11. Ceremony Backdrop

As I said earlier, this whole set-up came up organically. Yuseff's sister had the white fence way before, so I thought we could use it for the ceremony. But that's the only idea I had then. Then a month before the wedding, his sister had this pergola made for her business, and I asked if we can use it as well. We had the altar table and bench made from our scrap furniture pieces/ materials. We bought leaves garland to decorate and here it is set-up in our garage for trial.

Now here is the crew setting up the venue for the ceremony.

All done. My friend lend us her plants to add life to the set-up. The other lamp post is placed on the right side of the stage. You'll also see the reception backdrop peeking behind the white fence. We set those up first so after the ceremony, they can just remove the fence and reveal the other backdrop.

It's bright, simple, yet a bit playful at the same time.

Right side

Left side. Used this painting I made years before. Actually blogged about it here. :)

12. Reception Backdrop

Since I already had a moodboard for the backdrop, it's quite easy to execute. We just measured the space and came up with the best dimension. Here they are building our "cafe." ;)

When I saw this, I felt so giddy I can't contain my excitement. It's gorgeous! Hehehe.. The brick wallpaper is yet to be installed on both sides.

Here they are setting up the area for the reception. When I saw this photo, I'm so relieved that no guest were waiting here. They all went out for cocktails! I was a bit worried that guests would have to sit and watch all this chaos going on, but thankfully they went out, ate, and mingled.

Oh we also used the area rug I bought for the Tiny House. Thank goodness I bought two so it filled up the space better. The crank table is our coffee table here at the house as well. We wanted to bring as much of our own stuff to personalized the venue.

It turned our beautifully. It's really more than what we expected. I had envisioned the look in my mind way before the day, but nothing beats seeing it in real life.

13. Cupcake Stand

Yuseff insisted on having her mom's banana cupcake and macaroons as our wedding cake since he (and everyone who ever had the privilege of tasting them) loves those. I was quite hesitant at first since I don't want to trouble his mom on making them, but she happily obliged. Thank goodness because I love those too! Haha...

So we needed to make a cupcake stand. I had the wood stand made, and he had the metal stand made. Since we already had the two, we decided to use both! ;) Here is the sample set-up that we're trying out to see if it will fit the table. You see, the altar table for the ceremony was the cake table for the reception so we have to work with it. It fits!!

Yuseff decorating the stand. This stand are actually old planters they had lying around, he had them welded together to form this cake-like shape. He didn't want this photo posted because... and I quote "Mukha ako mashadong nag eenjoy!" Bwahaha! But I insisted so here it is... I think this was 3 days before the wedding.

Love it!!! We also bought cake toppers and spray painted them silver gold.

Because we don't want the exact same topper, he bought a spiderman and princess topper and placed them side by side for the other stand. Turned out really cute. Weird yes, but cute nonetheless... hehehe...

Our cake table :)

14. Avps / Games / Music

We also DIYed some stuff that you can't see in the photos. We showed 3 videos -- growing up/us/friends/family, proposal video, and the SDE. We edited the 2 vids. Not actually us, but we enlisted the help of one of my brother who's taking up multi media art to do those. He stayed with us in the Tiny House for 4 days to finish everything. We art directed but he did all the technical stuff. Thank you brother dear!

For the music, we put all the music we wanted played in a usb. From ceremony, cocktail hour, to reception. I just put them in different folders and labeled them accordingly so there'll be no confusion. We carefully chose the special songs like the dances, march, etc. But for the cocktail and dinner music, we just played songs in a reggae rendition. It suited the mood.

As for the games, we did the "guess the movie title" and "chinoy henyo." So we compiled movie clips that Yuseff chose, and we made images of our chinoy henyo words to be shown on the screen for the game. It was fun! I can't wait for the videos.

15. Bridal March Song

Yuseff is an amazing song writer considering he doesn't play any instruments. It's just a hobby that he does once in a while. One song he made a long time ago was for a bridal march. I dreamt of using that song for our wedding. So when the time came, I just had to walk down the aisle to that song. My other 2 brothers are in a band by the way, with their own music studio, so they helped us out and create the music for the song (thank you!). Yuseff then recorded the song, and I refused to hear it before hand. I wanted to hear the final recording for the first time on the aisle. And needless to say, it was wonderful. :)

Sooooo.... I think that's about it?! Haha... We did a lot for the wedding, but it doesn't feel like much. It's so worth it to go through our big day, seeing all our hard work being enjoyed and appreciated by everyone. We got to personalize it and we got the wedding we dreamt of. It's not just the concept or DIYs that made this day special, it's just the over all vibe, and love we felt through out the day.

I just wanted to share with you...We had these framed and displayed in our house. Left is our actual invitation, and on the right, I replaced the moodboard with actual photo of us on our reception. Haha... Close enough right? ;)

Anyway, to those who read all throughout this veeerrrrryyyy looooooonnnnggg post. Thank you! I hope it provided some entertainment (???) and if you're a future bride, then I hope that this gave you some ideas and I wish you happiness on your big day and all the days to come. :)

My last wedding post will be the supplier reviews, budget, and our SDE. After that, we'll be back to regular programming. Hopefully!!

*BTS set-up photos courtesy of our coordinator Imbitado Events. :)

(You may see the Preps here / Ceremony Reception here and and Supplier's Review, budget, and SDE here)

10
comments

Hi sis! Enjoyed reading your blog! I think I'll be a mainstay here. :) And as I keep on saying, beautiful wedding! Will respond to your PM in GT in awhile! :D and will surely wait for your remaining blog post!

I agree with one of the commenters, very practical but at the same time it looks bonggacious! Love all the DIYs especially the cake stands and the random flower arrangements. What I love most is that you both look so happy doing all these and all the things that you did are all intimate and special to you. That's a good start of a marriage. Best wishes and have a wonderful partnership!!

Hi Elle! Congratulations! I admire your and your hubby's efforts! It was a beautiful wedding indeed :)I just want to ask what material and how you did the chalkboard (the one as part of your reception backdrop/cafe design)?

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Hello, this is Elle Uy from Manila Philippines.

Decor Me Happy is a chronicle of my work as a decorator, our life in the "Tiny" house, endless design inspiration, and a place to share my mostly chaotic thoughts about my pursuit of happy homes and the randomness that is called life.

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